


pentangle

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Ben, Alpha commands, Alternate Universe: Arthurian, Alternate Universe: Medieval, Anachronisms Are Fun, Angst with a Happy Ending, Armguard Kink, Arranged Marriage, Ben and Rey on Tragically Different Pages, Chivalry, Conflicted Sex, F/M, King Poe Has Had It, Knight Ben, Lady Ravenna, Lady Rey, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Rey, SRT Loves Animosity, Secret Relationship, Sexual Tension, Sir Beniamy Solo, Smut, Spitfire Rey, Unprotected Sex, Wedding, a/b/o dynamics, consummation, semi-dubious consent, “I Thought You Were Dead” Drama, “I came here to ravish you but honestly I’d rather sleep”
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:28:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27457243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: Lady Ravenna asks for a token from her most faithful knight before he goes off to battle: his bite.But the mate who returns to her from the war is very much changed.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 56
Kudos: 312





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Couple things: 
> 
> We’ll unpack some chivalry stuff in the end notes.
> 
> Opening scene is based on the artwork “The Shadow” by Edmund Blair Leighton.
> 
> I know “Ravenna” doesn’t technically have a phonetic “Rey” sound but I still think the nickname works as a derision and it’s Arthurian so we’re running with it.
> 
> Thank you to Tam for looking over chapter one for me!

It is a symbol that Solomon once set in place

and is taken to this day to as a token of fidelity, 

for the form of the figure is a five-pointed star

and each lines overlaps and links with the last

so is ever-eternal, and when spoken of in England

is known by the name of the endless knot.

_ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight  _

trans. Simon Armitage

* * *

“I pray that you hold still so that I may complete my task.”

Bound as he was by his code of chivalry, the good knight did not entirely obey the lady’s command, for the feature she was focusing on wrinkled with amusement, causing the shadow upon the stone wall behind him to blur as she etched over it with charcoal. 

“Your prayers may have to wait for their answer, my lady, as I tarry here too long.”

Lady Ravenna stepped away from the shadow of his profile that she was so kindly tracing on the wall of the battlements. 

“You may go once your memory may properly linger behind you,” she answered stoutly, her lips forming into a determined line as she drew. 

His eyes softened with a laugh.

“You will remember me, then?”

Her cheeks shone red as she touched her charcoal to the stone, painting in quick strokes the shape of his pretty lips. While shy, his tone was as intimate as if he had lifted a hand to touch her face. The way she blinked at him, he knew she felt it. 

Her usually sharp voice was soft:

“I intend to. Until you come home.”

A waft of nervous airs shimmered between them. The smell of her. Like soft earth after a sound summer rain. And yet, something dry, wheat, or soft hay. Then sweet. Honey, perhaps, and it lingered and softened even as it pulled away from his senses as the smell retreated.

It was hard to sit still while standing with his guard down before a ripe Omega. Even if they were nothing to each other than friends.

While he knew it well; he tried not to let his nose sift through her scent. Mostly to keep still as she had requested, but also because it was unwise to allow himself to enjoy these baser instincts towards the lady he was bound to serve. Even now he would depart for battle in order to protect her, or at least the idea of her that came up when he protected his home. 

Her beauty acted as a parting gift to linger in his memory as they were separated. He had to etch her one way or another, he would trace her shadow in a more tangible way and bring it with him if he could, but he wasn’t sure if the entire wall would be wise to bring with him to the toils of battle.

He gestured to his double, a shadow for her to visit while he left her.

“Here I am, fixed for you upon the wall.”

Still, boldly, she looked over the lines she had drawn to complete his profile and glanced at him slyly. Her eyes made a challenge for him to meet as she nodded and then pressed her lips to the shadow’s cheek. 

“So I may come and be alone with him.”

Sir Solo bowed his head: he should not allow such hopes to cross between Ravenna and himself. 

“That may not be of any concern anymore if I am not soon gone. But then I will be disgraced for avoiding my summons, and you will not want me then.”

Her head shook slightly, as if they both could not let that happen, and as if she would never feel that way. Two impossibilities. That blush grew more subtle pink and high on her cheeks. A wistfulness to her expression. Her loveliness trapped him. 

They both knew he’d wait for eternity where he stood for her to find her words.

“The ship will not depart without you,” she kept her eyes on her replication of his face, instead of meeting his own eyes. It had been nearly impossible to keep her gaze on his after his upcoming departure to battle was announced. “Not without our most good knight.”

She traced her fingers along the overlapping patterns on the pentangle across his shield. 

Each of the five points represented a virtue of his service.

“I have something for you.”

He nodded, not expectant, but unsurprised.

It was customary for ladies to give a ring or handkerchief in this sort of parting, to be returned when reunited, the promise of a circle closed upon returning. A sign of fidelity. 

His lady was more than entitled to his.

Her hands trembled as she lifted a small vial from the bodice of her gown. It was warm from her bosom when she pressed it into his palm, it jolted his skin for a moment; he believed the glass contained her heartbeat, but that was only the feel of his own against the surface. 

“What is it?”

Her eyes closed fiercely and she swallowed. 

“My scent.”

Sir Solo also closed his eyes and his knees nearly gave out with the power of this token. She closed her hands over his, cupping the gift together, before he collapsed. 

_ “Please listen,” _ she gazed up at him with sadness in her eyes, “the king has had four bottles of this draft sent out to the far corners of the land. He expects a few offers to return. I will fight for myself: but you must return for me.”

Yes, his lady was an Omega, and he an Alpha, but they didn’t ever speak of it. It was not the nature of how he adored her. While her scent in the air brought him to the field where she rode her horse each day, it was not for need of a mate that drew him close to her. His adoration came from her laughter, the sound of her voice when she sang in court at the King’s behest, the sweet look in her eye when she cared for the tender mare kept near his in the stables. She was not an Omega to him. It was a love born of sight and sound, not scent. 

Yet something predatory bloomed in his chest that another Alpha would scent her before seeing her, claim her before meeting her, pretend to love her when no one but himself could. Not truly. 

These instincts made him afraid. But they told him something with perfect clarity at that very moment. Exactly who she was to him.

That she gave him the key to make an offer for her, above princes and dukes, was a dangerous thing. A knight could love her for the rest of his days: such was a separate devotion if he only dedicated his body in battle to her. But this was different. This was asking him to be selfish, to take her as his own above them men that, as a knight, he might  _ serve.  _

But it was for his lady, and he could not refuse her.

“I ask for a token in return.”

Sir Solo gave her a soft look, again unsurprised and prepared, and was about to make her an offer of a pair of dice of his father’s for her to hold in safekeeping. He had planned this when she asked him to come and say goodbye to her on the battlement before he left. He’d used them for luck, like his father had, but they felt like they needed a better holder. The dice belonged with her. With his family. But he’d give her anything. The heart in his chest, if she asked.

Ravenna swallowed thickly and smudged a charcoal feature on the wall with her thumb. His shadow made permanent so that she might see his face when she wished.

It was as if her thumb caressed his lips, at least the shape of them where they were replicated. He was strangely jealous of this flat likeness of himself. 

“Anything to strengthen my pledge that I will return to you as soon as I can.”

It was the conflicted promise of every soldier: that he served one above his own love. His kingdom.

She finally turned her hazel eyes to his. They shimmered with unshed tears. He was taken aback by the tremendous emotion on her face from this parting. He thought her a bit flighty lately; he had not missed that Rey had taken to avoiding him at whatever cost for weeks and only today was fawning over his features as he was to leave. He had tried not to take it to heart, or judge her, even though her avoidance had burned him. The other knights would sneer at his sullen face and he felt rebuked. They’d tell him that was simply the nature of fine ladies. Inconstant, superficial. 

But this sad face was all the proof he needed of the depths that he had hurt her. 

He took a deep inhale of her scent and felt it root in his belly. Raw and powerful and true. Yes, his mind and heart ruled why he served her with all of himself. But he hadn’t met another Omega in years, and there was no other Alpha for miles who had come in search for  _ Rey. _

Perhaps they were drawn to each other by something they couldn’t control. He couldn’t help that they were unable to look at anyone else in the room just from the smell of each other. 

But the troubadours told tales that one can’t help a smile at a pretty face, or a laugh at a joke, or the frantic quickening of a heartbeat when one’s beloved grew near: he had those things that could not be helped for her quite readily.

He could control that he was here, stalling his exit. He could control that he had to say goodbye to her before leaving.

As the tears brimmed over her eyes, she was fierce on the battlement that day:

“I don’t want your pledge. I want your bite.”

  
  


* * *

When he tasted blood in battle, half-mad with the fever that overtook him when he fought, he tasted her blood in his mouth again and again and it kept him from darkness.

The blood of his sins. The blood of his mate.

He was not a good man: less loyal than a dog. He had to leave his mate kneeling in a pool of her own blood on the battlements, his jaws snapping possessively at what they had consummated only with his teeth in her gland. A true knight would have waited until the bleeding stopped and kept her safe in their nest as he consummated the bite with a fuck that would wake the dead. She begged him to go and fulfill his duty to their king: his own words echoing back that a disgraced defector had nothing for them in the future. They were bound to each other. And he’d come back for her. Someday.

He knew what he had to do and he would have the muster up the strength to do it. Day after day. Blow for blow. Until the links connected himself back to her.

* * *

  
  


There was a small kitten in her care that trembled at the sound of the storm outside the castle. That was the focus of her worries tonight. 

Lady Ravenna’s shoulders sagged in sympathy of the poor thing, mewling with fright, as she collected it delicately from the basket where it slept and held it in her lap as the winds tossed across the wastes. 

A chill cooled the limp sweat that had formed from the presence of her head-rail, now unwrapped from her brow and throat and cast aside as it only ever was when she was completely alone. The garment was much too hot most days: but she had not gone a day without it in two years. 

Ever since she had last seen Sir Solo.

Removing it did not summon the memory of him as sharply as it once did. But there was a numbness to maintaining her rituals of self-protection now that left that sweat-damp skin prickled with gooseflesh whenever she was without it. 

Instead of unraveling her heavy, limp braids as she longed to do and then throw herself bodily into her bed, she instead tended to the frightened little kitten.

She and the small creature shivered together by the fire for a moment as thunder roared across the sky. 

On the next wind, a scent of spice filled the air quite abruptly. Rey’s eyes fluttered and her hand went automatically to her throat. 

Unaware, the kitten purred in her lap. 

She closed her eyes again. Her chair by the fire was a fine place to rest, even if she should undress and go to bed, she didn’t want to disturb the sleeping kitten. 

The scent would blow away in this storm, it was only a reminder, only a faint memory, and her heart shouldn’t be pounding at just a flicker. 

She touched the fluffy spine of the little kitten as a means to soothe herself. The timidity of her new pet was what made her love it. She had rescued it from a villager who already had a good cat for mice and did not want the litter she had born: she distributed it among her ladies and kept this one for herself. This one was the most shy, the littlest. It did not demand to be pet, but when she offered her hand, and if she held it still long enough the tiny thing would rub his head against her palm. 

She liked how the delicacy of this being gentled her. How it quietly met her offers of comfort instead of demanding it, or shunning it. 

Beniamy Solo had been like that. Once she had brushed the petals of a buttercup against his cheek as he tied up the straps of the  _ cuisse _ and  _ greave _ of his armor to his leg **.** His expression was confused, but he held perfectly still for Rey to resume her affectionate play, brushing it over his nose and brow, tickling his lashes with the flower. 

When he rode out to joust, the little flower was tucked in a vent of his helmet where she left it and he returned it to her when he had won. 

He had accepted her in a way others had not: and that had made her sweet and glowing. 

Rey felt dimmed by the passage of time.

Her love was strong two years ago. She worried now that it might wither and die from lack of shelter. Or from being trapped inside herself so long like a prison. But a small place to put her kind heart did her well. She was not without friends or allies, at least not before the marriage negotiations were ended and she would have to leave… 

There was a gentle nudge against her palm. Eventually the little beast would relax enough that she could stroke the kitten’s soft white ears while they waited out the storm together. 

She looked at the shield upon the wall. It still hurt to look at the symbol there: she rarely did so directly. The pentangle of a most perfect knight that Poe had given to her when Sir Beniamy Solo was lost on the battlefield. She would know every word of his tale of death, every detail, and recite it like a prayer if there was a single word known that could be uttered to her. But it was not as simple as knowing he was dead. No one on the battlefield could report what happened to him. Simply lost, her love was, or at least not proven dead. 

And all she had of him now was his shield. His symbol. Not knowing where her love was supposed to go when its vessel was gone.

Rey fidgeted with her nostrils prickling: the distant scent was like strong pepper that she wanted to just sneeze out.

But the scent grew stronger. She didn’t fully believe it was coming towards her as it seemed to. In fact, her head sank back in her plush chair and she relaxed further into near-dreaming. Perhaps this was sleep coming to tempt her, the moment she gave in to the sense she’d melt into a dream of her Alpha coming for her.

A heavy foot was taking the stairs up to her tower. The scent was vibrant enough to make her limbs tense, her nose wrinkle, even a little growl to come out from her throat. 

Her kitten, usually meek, noticed the change in her and leapt at her twisting fingers, lashing with little teeth and claws. It was as if she became more animal in an instant and the cat recognized her more fully.

Rey barely felt it as, the closer the unmistakable scent came, the more she tried to slip away from reality because it was not possible. 

_ Not anymore.  _

A fist pounded on her door louder than any thunder. Frightened, her little cat abandoned his game and leapt from her lap to burrow into the nest within its basket. To wait out the storm.

She kept her head resting back and her eyes on the ceiling. Just breathing, and yet barely so. Every breath was a wash of the scent, breaking in her lungs like a tide against the shore.

Rey clung to her last moment of sense as long as she could...

When she did not go to the door, it opened. 

A Black Knight stepped into her room, fully outfitted for battle, swimming with a scent that knocked her bodily back in her seat. 

_ That familiar frame swathed in enemy colors.  _

It felt so unreal that for a moment she thought the scent only clung to the body of he who killed Sir Beniamy Solo. 

Her mate.

“This is not quite the greeting that I had expected.”

Lady Ravenna dug her teeth into her lip: believing up til the last second that it was not truly happening. The scent clung to his armor because this had to be the knight that killed her love. This couldn’t truly  _ be— _

He crossed the room in an instant with the power and grace of a lion and hefted her up from her seat: held harshly against his body and so quickly she couldn’t help but squirm in his grasp.

She couldn’t help but feel like prey.

_ “My little mate,” _ came the voice under the metal helmet, tinny echoing deep from the inside, “you don’t intend to deny me a kiss after I’ve done all that you asked?”

Rey let out a cry as thunder struck the earth, as if to part them, loud enough to shake the stones of the castle. She flung herself back with all of her strength. 

It took that much, now, to part herself from him. And with time that strength would only vanish. 

Rey breathed and tried not to smell at the same time as he looked over her, more slow and assessing then he had when he walked in.

He was barely moved by her push, but she had managed to stumble away to her bed, at least for her to put the space of the bed between them should he come for her again.

There was a dark chuckle that expressed more anger than joy as he removed his helmet and tossed it upon the seat of her vacated chair. 

_ It was he.  _

First black hair veiled him. With a shake of his head, his pale complexion was exposed. It was the same face she had sketched onto the battlements: the same profile she had lovingly kissed in his absence. But it was marked by a long scar from brow to exposed throat, winding under his armor, that she had never seen before.

Rey must have gone very pale, for he received her reaction to him with coldness in his eyes. His  _ pain _ had shocked her, not his changed appearance, but it was clear he took it as a rejection before she could even summon a sense of her own feelings. 

She had not yet spoken a word to him: instead regarded him as a ghost or apparition, thinking the nature of the haunting and its purpose would make itself known in time. 

He crept closer again to address her:

“You should have thought more carefully, before you decided you loved it, that this face might come back to you looking quite different than before.”

He was near enough to touch her and every nerve in her body craved it without question because he was her mate. 

“Because it’s far too late now. I’m home.”

Rey interlaced her fingers and brought them up as a mask over her mouth and nose. His scent was strong now, tempting, familiar, as his helmet was removed and his exposed hair was long and loose. Even with the scar, he was a beauty, and if he came near again she feared for her entire self. 

Beniamy Solo would never make his mate give up something she couldn’t bear to part with. But this was not  _ her  _ Beniamy Solo. 

She made a run for the door but it was no good: he grasped her arm and pulled her close again, this time she could smell his skin. Adrenaline and ancient magic worked their way into her veins. She choked on a sob of pleasure just to be brought close to him, and relief, and fear. 

He was home. And so different. 

He tangled his gloved fingers in her hair and brought his lips to her scarred throat. Where was her good knight, her kind protector? Where was his sweet, shy smile, and the assurance that even a breath of conflict within her would keep him at a respectable distance? This man held and examined her like a fish in a basket at the market. He moved with leonine precision. He was not who had left her; who she had missed so terribly.

Remembering herself after a moment of allowing his lips to brush her skin, she beat her fists against his chest until he backed away.

“What do you want from me?”

These were the first words she spoke to him in two years. It seemed more shocking that these were the first she’d uttered since he walked into the room. 

A dark confusion crossed his features.

“What could I possibly still want from you? You’re my mate. For all I have need of: you are here.”

She shook her head fiercely.

“You’re late.”

This was where a man of honor would take a knee and beg forgiveness. Instead the Alpha stayed high above her and smirked. 

“Mating is for life, and you still breathe: lateness is relative.”

She shook her head and brought her heavy braids down over her neck. 

“Too late and with a remarkably unchivalrous manner. I should turn you away. In fact, I think I will.” 

Rey had already gathered up his helmet and made her way to the door again to send him off. Not even a  _ letter _ could have been sent in advance so she would know, no messenger in his stead, so she would have some faith and not feel like her heart died in her chest each morning when she woke in hopes of seeing him alive. And time crept closer and closer to the reality that if she ever did; she might as a married woman. 

This at least warranted a night’s solitude to wonder how she would face her love without starting another war and make him suffer for torturing her for so long. Angry tears came fast down her cheeks. He’d made her wait long enough to despair in his death, with no word to tell her otherwise, he could give her a night.

The door slammed shut as soon as she opened it a crack.

Apparently he couldn’t. 

His hand braced above hers on the wood. She jumped back as if burned and he used that for leverage as he steered her to the bed again. 

“If you want the  _ kind _ Sir Solo, climb up on the battlements and kiss the one you etched there.”

It was that way with the glimpses he gave her before he left. The looks. The small kindnesses. The press of his chaste lips to her hand. She wanted them all for so long, hoarded the memories, needed whatever he offered more and more each day. Rey was flooded with conflict at the return of his body, his smell. She had wanted it so much, surely allowing herself one kiss, from her mated Alpha at that… 

Something brought her back to earth, and that was his thumb, from the hand cupped around her ribs to hold her steady, digging cruelly between two ribs hard enough to bruise. It hurt. 

Realizing he could hurt her awakened her struggle: not her compliance. He held her steady as she seized in his grasp. 

Rey wept bitterly as he set his other hand upon her chin to tilt her eyes to his. He was a different man entirely, a changed beast, but the thrum of her heart supplanted what was courtly and justly done. He could be the roughest, rudest man on earth and her body would only take that energy and ruminate on it as some magical force. Craving for her Alpha in his truest form. Her near-broken bones would wish only to break, her scratched skin itching to be torn. 

An Omega craves what the Alpha gives. 

She would change, as he changed, to receive him. 

And now he was here and that was terrifying because she had been starved, and it would now become her nature to feast.

“He’s gone,” he told her, and took her chin in his gloved hand again. Then he showed her a pair of eyes forever changed by conflict. 

It stuck her to the floor like nails through her feet. She kept silent, but now still.

“When I made you a promise to return to you, I found later on that there was no promise that could be fulfilled for the man who came back to still be worthy of you. He just had to be alive. That’s all I am.”

Rey was quickly regretting not asking for a hundred things she had wanted then before they had parted. This was just the one, and what a mockery of that promise it turned out to be. His face was pale and stricken and  _ mean. _

She shivered as he touched her. He was frightening her and yet she didn’t care. She thought instead of those nervous kisses she’d sometimes press to his stone likeness, the sun warming her cheek, and it felt nothing like this. His hands covered her hips greedily, drawing her close, before bowing to kiss her. His mouth moved slowly, opening her, and then warmed her with his breath. 

She wanted to savor each breath: he was alive, he was alive, her mate was alive.

While it all still lasted.

“You’re too late,” she finally told him, harsh against his working mouth, “because I am betrothed.”

He stilled for a moment. A breath washed over her skin, angry like a bull, and she flinched. He held her too close to move more than a hair away from him. He kept them motionless for a moment. Rey was only then given any time to have sense of her feelings: heartbreak, relief, safety, and terror. They came over her in a wash of sensations and she had to cling to his arms to keep from slipping to the floor. 

He held her steady even as he too, seemed to be taken over by a torrent of emotion that made him quake. 

“My darling,” he hissed in her ear, a rage warming her that made her shrink from him as much as it made her...open longingly.  _ “What _ have you been doing in my absence?” 

Their kind were rare in this kingdom. Marriage had strict etiquette enforced by law: and no common etiquette existed to uphold the ancient bond of a mated pair. Only instinct. 

These were dealings that the laws of this land could easily deem invalid, despite every cell of their bodies knowing they could only have one person for the rest of their lives. 

Even repulsed by him, scared of him, her hands cupped behind his neck to hold herself up, woven in his silken hair. They had never touched so boldly before. She was surrounded by his scent so fully that it was hard to keep upright, in distress, when a bed stood so soft and so near. With him in her arms.

“I didn’t have a choice. I waited as long as I could. I will be presented as a bride tomorrow.”

“You are already presented as something else entirely,” he mused aloud, as if horrified, his grip on her as strong as iron.

She whimpered at the displeasure in his tone.

Her terror made the world slip out from under her. Rey had no family to speak of, so her marriage was a matter the King would handle personally. Any action that contradicted his choice would be a defiance of her sovereign. 

“When you were gone one year, our good King let me wait for you without question. He allowed me a second to hope that you would return, and wait for you, longer than most are allowed to keep hoping. But he needed to strengthen the alliance in the South—”

“What have you done,” his hands wandered her back, sifting under the laces of her girdle, “my little mate, what have you done?”

His tone scolded, but not harshly, and she felt her knees go soft as his fingers searched for bare skin. He was already speaking to her like he would fix her mess: and she didn’t exactly like that tone. 

“What have  _ you  _ done?” She challenged, choking on the pain of the question, “I do not recognize you.”

He hummed softly as he pried the laces of her girdle free of her body and gave her a clever look. 

“You asked for my bite. To be mine. That cannot be undone.”

It couldn’t: she wasn’t saying that it could. There was a pull to him, it was animal instinct, unbidden, so fierce she wanted to pull his brow to her chest and hold him there with his nose resting at her bosom. There was a part of her now that felt that all that was right and good would be to allow herself to drown in him.

She just couldn’t explain the doubt. 

Her eyes slammed shut as another wave of her Alpha’s scent washed over her. Trying to deprive the full effect of The Black Knight from overtaking her.

_ Did he love her still? _ Of that she was uncertain.

Rey let the girdle fall because he was bracing himself for her to fight for the garment. In surrendering it she could instead use his distraction to step further away, which she did as he snatched it from her waist. 

He growled and set a knee upon her bed, watching her flee, since she had managed her way to the other side of it. It was if he were going to pounce. They were fluttering around this room like two mad birds in a cage. She had to put an end to it.

“I asked  _ him  _ to be my mate. A worthy man. I will not fall into bed with you if you treat me harshly. No matter your designation.”

“Or, it would seem, you simply will fall into bed however your King demands it.”

She crossed her arms. The ghost of the storm’s chill traveled up her body. Or maybe she lacked the heat of his embrace and only now felt again how cold the world was without it. 

“He was your king once, but I can see your allegiance has changed, among other things.”

His face was both wounded and hard. This contrast was confident that she could not hurt him, and hurt all the same.

“Don’t speak to me of changed allegiance. You’re thinking of betrothal when you bear my bite.” 

She saw a flash of white near her foot: he did not see it but she knew the image well. Her little cat was shaking from fear, from the fighting and raised voices that it had never heard in these safe rooms before. That was what startled her to rage.

“Ghastly brute, Black Knight you are! You mock my desire for kindness and yet are sour at your failure to claim me. Had you knelt at my door and sweetly knocked to announce your return, I’d have let you in with gratitude and we’d have made love twice by now and all would be at peace.”

It was Beniamy Solo’s face that looked back at her, guilty as a dog sneaking scraps, her knight. Not killed in battle, or destroyed in the toils of war, but stricken and hopeful and  _ good.  _

“How many times must I tell you that man is dead.”

She drew her most fearsome glare. All this time spent waiting and he wanted to pretend he didn’t need to deserve her. 

“Then you won’t have what you want.”

He grew serious once again:

“I’ll have my mate.”

He took a step to near and Rey gasped and her hands came up to shove him back again. 

He stumbled, heavy with both armor and confusion. 

Only now did his expression mirror even a fraction of the shock she felt. 

Yes, they were mated, yes, it sent tremors through her body to refuse him, and yes, she wanted more than anything to allow him into her bed even if it was just a glimpse of her old love. But it was late and she was tired and he wasn’t giving her a moment to think regardless of what she chose. 

“Be  _ kind  _ to me!” Rey shouted, rising up to her full height and higher still, for her mate reared back from her with his eyes wide, “you made vows. Honor them! That I should  _ ever _ have to raise a hand to a knight for him to heed me. It’s shameful.”

Sir Solo looked at her with his chest heaving with heavy breaths, almost sobs of air, from where she stood tense under her loose gown about to raise her hand to him again. 

“I am being asked to be a good man, and to come back to you from this war,” he swallowed tremulously, blinking at her and looking all at once a child, “I have tried for you. In remaining on this earth I am too changed by it. If I am ever tender again, it will be the last bloom of decay that softens my body as I rot in this earth.”

Rey’s hands clasped in front of her as if to shield her breaking heart. 

“No. Don’t say that.” 

He stepped towards her, moving devoutly, blindly,  _ wildly.  _

What she once knew of him was an unfailing devotion. Now, what was between them felt more animalistic than something he chose for himself, yet seemed just as blind. The look in his eyes, while cruel, seemed unfailing in his intention to be with her. It tightened in the pit of her stomach as one informed the other: instinct and devotion. 

He would have her because it felt like nature mandated it. He returned because of the strength of his previous devotion.

It was confusing, because instinct was inside Rey as well, telling her to let him come near as he approached, that consumptive faithfulness clouding his eyes as he spoke:

“There is no light but you. The star that led me home. I will finally rest now.”

She wasn’t sure what his aim was in his previous fervent embraces, but now he held her and collapsed with her onto her bed, making no other move to ravish her. He fell like a stone tower and seemed to be overtaken by exhaustion as soon as he closed his eyes. 

She closed her own eyes and swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Ben.”

A hot, heavy breath washed over her collarbone. At least he was too exhausted to see her shiver. Or to see her crack open her eyes to look at his face. Despite his words, he did not  _ seem _ dead.

She took a moment to clear her mind of the smell of him in her bed. It was intoxicating, their scents blending together, she almost climbed over him and lost herself in it.

“Yes?”

His tone was mournful. He did not so much as open an eye as he responded in a strained whisper. But he  _ was _ breathing, which seemed to conflict with how he acted about being laid to rest once he saw her again.

Rey swallowed and kept her voice flat as flint:

“I didn’t say you could sleep in my bed.”

He sniffed, tired, as if she were already his wife merely complaining about his cold feet under the covers. 

“I’m your mate.”

She sat up, his arms still wound loosely around her waist, weighing her down so she wobbled and had to plant her hands on the mattress to complete the action without sinking back into a lying position. 

“Enough of this. So weary a traveller are you that you give up before I say your journey is done? I did not have you come back to me just to collapse at my feet and surrender. Get out of my room.”

His brows furrowed and his eyes stayed closed.

“Ravenna—”

“Enough,” she gave his shoulders a shove to half-roll him off the bed, “you’ve had every chance to show you’d still honor me. You’ve failed for tonight. Get out.”

The glare he gave her was awful. It burned through her veins in a seize of guilt. But no. Not like this. He was not to come bursting through her door and demanding her as he pleased. 

She bit back tears at the thought of whatever he must have expected from her. 

For two long years she’d had to be smarter than she once was: to make herself a passive pawn and hope no one discovered that she bore the bite of a dead man. This deception was...her mistake alone. 

He was not there to help her navigate life in court. It was a game of time, something she had few resources to buy for herself, and she spent whatever she had on two years waiting for his return. Stalling. 

So she needed to think about what there was to be done about all this. Before tomorrow, when she would learn who had her hand by the King’s orders. 

She didn’t suspect Ben would leave the room. He was too changed. He would probably roll over and sulk, remaining in her bed because he was bigger and her Alpha, and she would find somewhere else to go and think. Maybe pour out her troubles to the familiar profile etched in the battlements, even during this storm he’d more likely listen than this living man.

Ben sighed and stood up from the bed. 

“The way you regard me is unusual. Unnatural. We should—be at an understanding with each other. Even in anger.”

With nervous fingers, Rey began to un-plait her hair. If she looked at her task and not at him, perhaps she, well, she didn’t know what. 

Despite the anger in his tone, she did want to know the same thing. Why she felt so frantic to get away when he drew near.

There was no answer to explain what he had observed. She knew as well as he did that this should move like water, always downward, until they flowed out into an endless sea together. She only felt fear tonight. All of her other emotions bore it like weights around their ankles. Anger and fear. Longing and fear. Love and fear.

To be called  _ unnatural _ for what she also did not understand was a barb she would not soon unsnare from the tender wound it inflicted. 

It had felt unnatural that for two years, she’d felt pain unlike anything she’d ever known each cycle he was not there to complete with her. Impulsive girl that she was: she had loved him, he had been an Alpha whose scent curled every edge of herself, and she was an Omega with no family, nobody, and thought these points were all connected and interwoven. 

She was afraid that she didn’t understand this part of herself. Now she shared it with a stranger who did not compose himself with an ounce of chivalry. Who did not even have enough of a manner about him to prevent himself from calling her unnatural.

Casting her a look that was equal parts guilt and fury, he removed himself from her rooms. Rey rushed to bar the door the instant it shut and pressed her brow against the grain to let herself weep.

Her love was alive and all she felt was dread.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter would probably exist in the transitional moments between “for legal reasons, we are consummating this marriage” to “medieval WAP verse played on a lute” so I added a ‘conflicted sex’ and ‘semi-dubious consent’ tag for that journey.

The Black Knight fell back against her door as she pulled it open the next morning. 

He was seated in his armor on the stone floor of the hall outside her chambers: he must have been leaning on it, asleep, when she attempted to exit. 

When he looked up at her, though, the clear annoyance on his face contradicted this. Alert and impatient. He might have slept here, but he had in fact been awake when she exited. 

Waiting.

Rey straightened her shoulders to wield off the pang of guilt. That couldn’t have been very comfortable.

“You take so long to get ready.”

Lady Ravenna folded her hands in front of herself, clenching her fists under her long sleeves, and swept past him instead of answering. She’d argue but she in fact had to take time preparing herself due to the day’s circumstances. Two looped braids were exposed from her head-rail, hair brushed until it shined and woven intricately together, looking as glossy and fine as an oiled wood carving. 

It had taken a lot of work and cursing to be ready to step out of this door looking presentable to speak to the King. 

Especially following a miserable night that clung heavily in red swollen remnants under her eyes. 

He didn’t need to comment on the end result as if it were not worth it. 

A certain pain swelled in her chest. She was already his mate. He already had her. He didn’t need to use sweet words. 

Instead he surveyed her distrustingly. The filmy white of the head-rail covering her skull and throat made him raise a brow. Covering her neck as he had not seen last night. 

Rey’s thumb worried the gold embroidery on her sleeve. 

“I am to appear in front of his majesty to find out who is to be my husband.”

From the corner of her eye she saw him stretch with great discomfort. Sleeping on the floor after a long journey must have been painful. Her instincts to nurture him, soothe him, make him home were a jumble of misgivings and desires.

He grunted as his spine seemed to settle into place after being hunched for so long and then glared at her.

“So you will tell him that is an impossibility because you are already mated.”

“But not married,” she said coldly, “and as our king is not presented, he might not be sympathetic to our ways. We do not have the protection of the law. He has never known if I am an asset or a burden. It’s complicated. I  _ can’t _ refuse him when he is my sovereign.”

“No, I think the one who you can’t disobey is your Alpha.”

His steps were heavy, his gait loose and lazy from a night spent as sleeplessly as hers. Rey knocked him off balance and pressed him up against a stone column easily with her fist wrapped around his tunic. 

He could still overpower her with little effort: but she had simply surprised her way into the upper hand:

“And the one you must obey is your lady, or you have no honor, and I will not receive a man with no honor. Test my word on that: you won’t like what I’ll prove to you.”

Beniamy paused as if slapped. 

Rey’s eyes softened, her brow creasing sadly under her veil. Even she knew her words were meaningless as an Omega. It was done. She loosened her grip on his garment and smoothed her hand instead on his breastplate.

“I need to act wisely. That involves finding out who I am refusing before I give my refusal. You’re only just returned, Ben, please. I can’t risk angering the king so that he might despise you. Let me try to handle things and we might—find each other again, in all this.”

Rey was already facing one impossible task this morning, and now volunteering herself for two. She really was foolish. It was unclear if they’d ever recognize each other again. 

His eyes bore burning holes into the fabric that covered up his mark: as it had been covered for two years. This was supposed to be a declaration of ownership that she had asked for. It was hidden away from sight all while he lost half of himself to the war. 

“Does he know that in pawning you off he condemns another man to death?” 

Rey looked at him, that familiar fright rising through her again, the fear that sweet  _ Ben _ was gone. 

“You truly would take everything else away from me if it meant having me for yourself?”

Without pause, he nodded.

Disgusted, Rey pulled away and resumed her path down the winding stairs. 

He followed closely behind:

“Is that his plan for peace? No one else shall have you. Nor are you his to give away.”

He tailed her down the steps of the tower, because of the echoes, he spoke in a low hiss: 

_ “Because you are mine.” _

Rey raised her chin and kept her steps slow and graceful. She would not run from him like a frightened child.

Yes, she had been hasty and foolish to ask him to claim her.  _ But.  _

Had Poe’s search for a match drawn the attention of an Alpha and she were still unmated: Rey would have been in grave danger. She would have taken the soldier she knew over any stranger. Even if now she’s not so sure, she at least can place some hope in that. It had also been, while a mournful two years, two years she did not have to worry about someone finding her vulnerable enough to snatch against her will. Two years where her scent was untracked, where she could ride through the forest without fear. With his bite on her throat, hidden away, she could go to a festival in the village without fearing some Alpha might hunt her down and take her as a mate. While she wasn’t free from a political match, she had been liberated for the time being from a frightening biology. 

In some ways she  _ couldn’t  _ regret this decision. At least until this moment.

“If you intend to follow behind me so closely like a maid, will you at least carry my train?”

He growled at her, but she felt the fabric around her hips pull with some tension as he bowed to raise her hem up from where it dragged on the steps.

That was better. At least he would be  _ some _ help. She was glad to see him slightly improved from the night before.

* * *

  
  


His Omega tried her best to keep him out of the great hall. This was a matter of great delicacy, she had breathlessly explained, that the king would respond well to this action if it felt like he was a savior to their plight. Betas liked to think of themselves as Alphas in the Alpha’s absence, and there would be conflict if they were so swiftly greeted by one. 

Sir Beniamy didn’t listen. As if he would just sit in the shadows resigned to let someone else have her. 

Yes, wars would be fought over him taking her away from a powerful groom, or her honor would be called into question if it was revealed what they had done. He knew these things, this court, but he had no use for this knowledge anymore. 

He would not belong here. 

And what good was Rey’s honor if she could not be faithful to her own mate?

He lasted only as long as Poe, once his king and comrade, called to welcome Rey for this momentously joyous news. Then he stepped out of the shadows. 

Not only would her groom’s identity be revealed to her: her groom would be, as would her wedding, on this very day. She would be presented as a bride upon the arrival of her lord: a nobleman who had fought valiantly in battle and sought his just reward arriving soon, expected at any moment. 

And, regrettably, not an Alpha.

Ben saw Rey freeze as she accepted this new information that, if the suitor was not an Alpha, the conflict could not be solved as neatly as the groom rejecting her for her mated status. Perhaps less violent than two Alphas for an  _ unmated _ Omega: but a Beta wouldn’t know by his own biology where not to stick his sword. 

They were linked together in ways that couldn’t be described in words now, every action of hers he observed was as if he became aware of his own motions the instant they were already happening. So quickly he was aware of them he almost forgot that none of Rey’s actions were determined by his own will. He just felt them as if they were his own with razor-sharp precision. Ben saw Rey breathe as she began to process her response as one that was purely political. He took a shorter breath than she, and still felt her steady herself, though he was quicker to act while she was only beginning her plan.

Ben saw a crush of ladies surrounding her with excited whispers, trying to get her to smile or blush for the mysterious groom. 

Rey herself looked pale of any joy: the announcement perhaps lining up with what would be her wedding too swiftly for her to know how to make another move.

“My King,” she bowed forward, and seeing her bowing to another man, a Beta—

It broke his control because he did not return to her from war for this.

_ “There is one objection.” _

He revealed himself from behind the stone column she had begged him to remain behind. 

Lady Ravenna’s shoulders sank. She was so obviously reeling from the news in such fast succession: betrothed to bride in one morning. It was clear she was buying time for his return and they had just run out. 

His breath fell heavy from his chest, emptying and filling with a fury that quieted even the most scandalized of gossips in court. He walked clear to his mate.

He should have just carried her off last night, back to his home, and made her the rebel princess of his lands. She’d take liberation from Poe very well, once she tried it. That and every inch of her mate’s cock would sweeten her new allegiance. 

There was nothing of king and country to a knot. 

Now her eyes on him were both miserable and desperate. Perhaps this was their last hope. But if it failed...

Her look bade him to act carefully but he was without a care now. Her way would have her end up married to another man within an hour. 

There were gasps at the presence of the Black Knight descending upon the court. A powerful enemy, and one directly contradicting the king in his own castle. It was indeed risky for his reputation on the battlefield: more monster than man now. 

He could feel Rey’s panic rise as all came down around her exactly the way she didn’t want.

He wasn’t perceptive enough to revel in the relief that washed over her when he appeared at her side at the foot of Poe’s throne, but it was gone and replaced with panic before he could be happy it was there. Rey made a small, soft choking sound as he took her arm possessively. He would not be negotiating for her. He’d simply prove his ownership to any and all witnesses.

The first thing he tore from her was the armlet that secured her sleeve tightly to her elbow: depicting her house sigil, though Rey was the only survivor, and the name she bore before his. 

Rey realized what this meant at once and went limp in his arms. 

He knew her better than that: her fight had not gone out, but there was nothing to do to argue in the eyes of the King’s court. Though her head rested back on his shoulder as if she had swooned, he felt her underlying rage with her jaw set with fury. 

She was nobody but his.

The transfer of names was more complicated for mating than marriages. There was a kinder integration of wives into the family. Because she belonged to him fully as his mate, she was Rey  _ of _ Beniamy Solo, not the Solo family. While marriage was a more absorbing mass, where Rey would exist on the limb of some convoluted tree that in this particular case included queens and princesses and warlords and scoundrels, mating was a lateral union of two. 

Now it was like she had no family at all. 

Such was the force of the bond. They belonged to each other.

He was not done with her.

Next came the head-rail, which he took from her with more precaution as it was deliberately wrapped across her throat. It was obvious what he revealed, but there were still gasps amidst the room when her scarred gland was displayed for all to see. 

All was silent as the torn, filmy veil floated to the floor.

Poe’s eyes were locked on the torn flesh of her old wound. Disappointment flitted across his features, but Ben knew him better than to miss the slight amusement also present there. 

His old friend always liked a chance to get to think on his feet. 

When he lifted his gaze to Ben, he saw his fellow soldier now transformed.

“I had wondered where you’d gone when it was said you were lost on the battlefield.”

It was shock enough that, to the eyes of the court, Rey was ruined. It didn’t matter if he hadn’t claimed her. This was proof enough who she belonged to. 

Yet Poe didn’t even look at Rey.

Ben’s arm tightened around his mate.

“My word is my honor, and I had already given that to Lady Ravenna.”

Poe closed his eyes. They had known each other since they were boys and this was a familiar expression of frustration. 

“So... _ somehow, _ you’ve returned.”

Rey rested in the crook of his elbow, forgotten by Poe but not by those who surrounded them. It made Ben bristle, that Rey was such and insignificant pawn and still he almost lost her, and her obvious anxiety was prickling his heart with a sense of ferality. To attack. Protect. 

With a pang that stopped his heart he realized that he had just ruined her in front of all these onlookers. As if all was proven by her bare throat that needed to be proven, Ben now clasped a hand to cover her neck. Loosely. Just to keep his palm over the bite he gave her that the court now leered at. 

How dare they judge her. She was his. 

“I’ve come for her and I’ll leave with her. By my honor: any man you declare as hers I will challenge to a duel, and I will win and take her as my prize.”

Rey let out a little grunt of disgust at that idea. But she kept her head about her, thought quickly on her feet, and he could hear the gears of her mind working:

“I had come to explain my situation this morning but I was unable to—” Rey faltered in Ben’s grasp and looked helplessly at their king, “I had not wanted to disrespect your command or disobey you, Sire, forgive me, forgive us—”

“It’s a shame, I had arranged you a fine match,” Poe interrupted imperiously, But Ben saw the glimmer of a performer in this dramatic play, “The best man I know. But it seems unwise to pursue a course of action that could endanger us all. This will be made right. Rey, you will marry your knight and he will assume responsibility for you from this day forward. Our guest will instead be married alongside you to another fine lady of this court. Not a word will be spoken of this substitution: and that is an order to all you who bear witness. Praise my mercy and remember it has limits.”

Ben’s grip on his mate tightened. This meeting went about as well as it could have, in his opinion, but he felt her trembling again.

Rey bowed as well as she was able in Ben’s grasp.

“Thank you, my liege, for your most kind judgement. I am sorry to have dishonored myself and accept gladly who you determine will be my husband.”

It hurt him to hear her voice sound so unsure. Perhaps because no matter what she put between them, they were only drawn closer. Ben had been entirely quiet since their bond had been revealed to all at court, instead nosing at her throat in complete peace. It was strange behavior but he had come here to make this declaration even if it meant he’d die: Rey was his, and all should know it. 

“But,” Poe “you are no longer welcome in this court, or to my own protection; and you will leave for wherever your mate chooses to take you in the morning.”

Rey’s outpouring of thanks faltered on her lips. Her eyes went wide and her body went very still. Ben could have lifted her off her feet and carried her off, frozen like this. 

He didn’t let her go until the groom, who was none the wiser, arrived with his entourage of merry knights and the substitute bride was selected from the dais as if meant for him from the start. 

This girl was much more eager to be wed to a stranger than Rey appeared to be to her own mate. Happy and smiling and practically dancing amongst the bridal flowers strewn about the two brides. 

Rey wore hers with the stillness of a corpse. 

The court was hastily whipped into the frenzy of a double wedding, some girl on the sidelines selected like cattle at the market for the incoming warlord to be given spoils. 

It was almost Rey. 

He reached for her cheek to acknowledge all was safe, they were mated, soon to be married, but she shrank from him and faced the dais where they would be wed with eyes clouded with sadness and loss. 

* * *

  
  


It was tradition for the ladies in service of the bride to help her prepare for her husband. Rey herself had gladly maintained this tradition when her friend Rose was wed to her fine soldier when he returned, flushed with happiness and envy for them both, full of excitement and anticipation for when it would be her turn. 

Now the bedchamber was full of maidens singing songs and teasing the bride as they stripped her of her wedding garb, as a party of groomsmen would be similarly rousing the husband as he kept himself away as long as he could. 

Now, with giggling handmaidens dancing around with lightness of spirit she could only dream of, Rey instead was filled with a hollowing feeling of dread.  _ This _ had been a day she had waited for. But she did not know the man who would enter her chamber. Not anymore. 

As she was divested from her bridal garb, she was less certain that she wanted these maids to undress her for his arrival. She thought of him roughly tearing the family crest from her sleeve and the veil from her head, and in front of everyone in court no less. 

Every layer shed here made her feel more and more vulnerable. This was a ritual for a virgin, even if she hadn’t taken anyone into her bed, it was not for whatever she would be seen as by her home now. Defiled. 

She had never anticipated when she asked for that bite that she would lose her home for this. She just wanted Ben to come  _ back _ home.

The ceremony of bawdy songs made it to the point that Rey only had a light chemise protecting her, and when Kaydel’s hands reached to grab it from her, Rey made her own grab for the hem. Another arm crossed fiercely at her chest and held the garment protectively to her shoulder, so it would not be easy to remove, lending to more ferocity than feminine nerves. 

Kaydel’s face fell.

Laughter left the room swiftly. 

It was not simple virtue and a bride’s nervous modesty that made Rey react this way. A hush filled the chamber as they watched her, and the immediate fear that mirrored her own original anxiety intensified it to a state of panic. An ouroboros that slid infinitely between the same jaws of the serpent. Fear fed itself. Fear swallowed itself. 

* * *

He appeared to have been just as resistant to the ceremony when he appeared at the door: he still wore his black armor when he clambered into the room. 

The ladies who had once been jubilant were already silent and slipped from the room as soon as he appeared. Rey, in her light chemise, sat up from the place on the bed she had been expected to wait for him.

They were silent for a few moments. 

_ This _ was no longer forbidden. This was expected, even to Betas who didn’t understand their ways. Rey was tense as if she was waiting for him to pounce on her. The moment was weighted and made her shoulders bend until she nearly bowed in front of him. But he took so much longer than she expected to move that she lifted her eyes to him nervously. 

His eyes were heavy with boredom as they flickered around the room, eventually landing on his mate. 

“I wish to eat,” he perplexed her by drawing himself up on the bed in his full armor,  _ “and you will feed me.” _

It was not innuendo that tinged his words, but the direct command of an Alpha.

A spark shot through her at the command: so immediate it came but so harmless was the order. Too soon for her liking, yet milder in nature than she initially feared. 

It struck her as odd he hadn’t bothered with commands the night before. He could have taken anything he wanted. She’d have to obey.

There was food left out for the newly wedded couple—should they need refreshment from the lengthy task awaiting them—so Rey was easily drawn to his side as she was compelled. He plucked the selection of cold meats from her fingers quite like a wolf, and for every bite he took, he ordered she eat as well. 

She barely tasted a bite. Her senses were dull around him, the spice of the food barely a whisper compared to the scent of him that filled her lungs.

They were not welcome at their own wedding feast. Rey was cast out of her country and now entirely reliant on him. Here she had friends, allies, a home.

Now she had a mate.

While he rested on her bed, enjoying the welcome he had not received the night before, they both relaxed into an understanding, albeit a hollow one as she pretended that she performed the role of his wife. 

She didn’t know how to be a mate. A wife was easier.

Rey found herself somewhat calmed once a few bites slipped past her own lips. It was servile and insipid, but again, harmless in the face of her darker expectations. There was an ease in the act of obeying a command, more chemical or animal in nature than human, and it remedied her fear to be caring for her Alpha as he lay upon the bed. His teeth grazed her skin each time she fed him a morsel from her hand; but otherwise he was more subdued for the time being.

“Were you very hungry?” she asked softly, thinking of how long he had been exactly where she could find him, outside her door, or paces behind, or circling her. It was not long at all after two years but long enough to miss a few meals since he arrived. There hadn’t been any time for the pair of them to eat, and the king had them leave the wedding feast before there were many questions from his more honored guest. 

The same guilt as seeing him stretch from his night spent on the floor brought something cold and fluid to toss like ocean waves in her chest. 

She hadn’t taken care of him properly. She was a poor excuse for an Omega. And she didn't like that these feelings were now part of her design.

He looked at her as he licked his lips. 

“It is nothing to concern yourself with.”

Annoyed, she brushed a strand of black hair off his brow without meaning to touch him so intimately.

“When was the last time you ate?”

“On the road,” he narrowed his eyes suspiciously, “what brought this on?”

Rey’s lip quivered and then  _ she _ turned away and refused the question.

“It is best left forgotten why I asked.”

“Rey,” he reached for her, grasping her wrist firmly. Sir Solo would never dare, and would never call her  _ Rey _ without permission.  _ “Tell me.” _

She seized against the command until an answer forced its way out:

“Because it’s my place to feed you now, and I will always care for your health more than my own for the rest of my life, whether I want to or not.”

It made her stiff with frustration and anger when the words left her. A true knight would never command. 

She tore away as soon as the act of obedience was given and, her body released from it, she could manage to. 

He  _ never  _ ordered her before. 

Aftershocks moved harshly through her body. Old magic. Something more powerful than the both of them.

He allowed her to move from his sway. She felt the moment when the tension released and she could move somewhat freely again. It was that she had obeyed, it was more complex than that, it was like the intention he had turned to her was obedience and it pinned through her like a knife until he unstuck her. 

Beniamy sighed and reached for the straps of his breastplate. She was too far away for the action to intimidate her. From the way he held his breath and stared at the ceiling, he was simply too uncomfortable to bear wearing it while lying down any longer. 

It rested on the floor by the bed with a metallic clang.

“You chose  _ me _ as your mate.”

Rey looked at the fire and shrugged. It was only midday: their festivities were banishment from the feast and relief that Poe did not take his vengeance further. 

“I know what I chose.  _ Who _ I chose. He certainly didn’t order me about and speak of death while he touched me.”

And he didn’t look at her with such a dark, nebulous expression. Ben was sitting on the edge of her bed with his thighs spread comfortably, textured, armored breeches clinging to his skin. The man she knew wouldn’t sit in her presence, he’d kneel, he’d offer her sweet words and wouldn’t allow himself to even look at her unless she permitted it.

But it felt nice to be looked at this way. Strange. Emboldening. 

With a sigh, he beckoned her forth. 

It was not an order, so Rey was more receptive, but approached carefully. His scent was overwhelming, it had been since he returned, but now there was no other panic to cause her distraction but for what was to come next  _ here _ . 

Ben caught her chin in his hand and carefully considered her expression as he drew her closer. 

“Fascinating, isn’t it, that I’ve mated you yet never had you?”

It was an attempt at seduction. Dark and roiling in the depths of his eyes. Like they had been waiting for this bliss to begin and he was about to take the first bite.

She glared at him.

“Be  _ sweet _ to me.”

He grunted uncooperatively. She set her hands firmly upon his shoulders. 

“If I was  _ very _ hungry, I wouldn’t have noticed last night.” He told her this first, and then pressed his brow to her jaw.

“I’m afraid I’ll never live up to the lover you’ve made from nothing but stone and memory,” he whispered next, as if confessing something painfully obvious, and while it made her blush, she softened to the teasing tone of it. 

“Try to,” she urged, tilting her head. Allowing his scent to surround her gave the ability for sincere tenderness to start to bud. Her braids had come loose when he removed her head-rail in court, now her hair curled around her shoulders, and she watched as he took in her scent in return. “I promise, he’ll be very easy to rise above.”

There was a wicked grin: new, but not unwelcome. Rey felt encouraged enough to draw nearer as he hands guided her closer.

“The past?”

She swallowed at his error. It was false that she preferred the present Beniamy to the past. But she preferred him to her only other option. There was a nervous fidget with his tunic as she gave her answer.

“The stone.” 

It was as if they sparred with swords: he had let himself be open, and then his guard came quickly back up at her correction, but just the same he continued on with her.

“Is that so?”

“He’s hard. Rough against my lips when I kiss him. And cold,” Rey sighed as she brought her bare hands to his neck, “you burn me.”

Touching him filled her with amazement, purely animal, and she was letting her body act before her head. Their mating bite was certainly a pairing of those two at their most desperate to protect herself: Poe had wanted her matched with a stranger, and she adored Ben, so the solution was something secret and destructive in case there was no other option. 

She just never thought that he’d come to claim so roughly. Not the person she knew.

“And yet last night you fling me from your bed.”

She tilted her head at him thoughtfully.

Feeding him had warmed her limbs more than she’d care to admit. Blood heated and purposeful. Court life refined a great deal of instincts out of her: Omegas were so uncommon that not even the king seemed to know what to do with her, precious resource she might be. Sending out her scent to suitors who weren’t looking for an Omega. As Poe himself was a Beta, there was a moment where even Rey was aware he looked over her as if unsure that this could mean she was meant for him to claim as her most deserving king, or if her condition was so bewitched he dare not obtain this rarity. 

Rey herself hadn’t met another Omega since she was quite small, so there was no one to teach her of the breadth of her instincts. These past twi years were without guidance, and without Ben. But she had to assume that this pulse of good feelings was from things happening as they should. He was, after all, her mate  _ and _ husband now.

“I flung you from my bed as I would anyone who behaved so abominably.”

His nostrils flared at the suggestion that anyone be given a chance at her bed. His arms came around her where she stood, tight as a vice, and a pleasure dripped slow from the crown of her head to her toes. Surrounded by fierce wanting. 

This tactic of explanation seemed to be reaching him more than just angry protests.

“You don’t like that, do you?” she taunted, pressing him until he rested on his back upon her— _ their, _ as wherever she rested would be forever now—bed. His chest plate’s removal bared the buckle of his arm guards across his broad chest, at his throat, under the neck of his tunic. The leather strap strained with his fearsome breaths. Heavy and labored from her words. Rey delicately freed the straps of his chausses at his thighs instead. Metal links of mail jangled down his legs as they dropped to his ankles, tight-fitted trousers lying beneath. “Some brute trying to order his way in, refusing my terms, taking whatever he wants.”

He came up on his elbows with a lethal glare. Rey tested her luck once more:

“Another Alpha behaving as you did, with me, that’s not a pretty picture for you, is it?”

His fist closed around the loose material of her thin chemise and he yanked her closer by the bunched fabric. 

“Unacceptable,” he growled, and Rey bit his lip harshly in response.

“So I was right to cast you out. Your mate was being dishonored.”

He gathered her to his chest and groaned into the kiss, if it could be called that. Her lips didn’t touch him. Her teeth did. 

Ben still shook his head. Infuriating her with stubbornness. 

“You belong to me.”

She tugged on the strap that bound his armguards together: bringing him closer and also tightening his arms around her at the same time.

“When I am freely given.”

“Give,” he buried his face against her neck, pleading, nuzzling the scar he gave her, “Give to me.”

But it wasn’t an order, by way of cadence, that had to be obeyed. Rey set her chin on his shoulder and looked at the gray light of the window. Considering this moment. 

They never had a chance for sharing kisses in the stables or riding through the forests like some knights did with their ladies. Even someone who had the freedom of her imagination to create these moments, Rey had never exactly pictured this. Not the tension or the hunger or the fact that her emotions were still with her, still real, even if she could put them out of sight with a sweep of her lips.

_ “Ask nicely.” _

He groaned again, helplessly, and she stopped puppeteering his guards to wrap her arms around his shoulder and climb upon his lap. 

He froze like the matter was decided by her actions: but Rey held herself perfectly still and did not give an inch more. 

“You heard me,” she reminded him when a long moment passed without anything at all. 

_ “Rey,” _ he groaned. Not a proper address, but they were rather intimate in this setting. She’d allow it, “may I please, properly, be joined to my mate and my bride? Finally?”

She sat back and took a steadying breath. Her hands had climbed up the sleeves of his tunic to clutch at the guards covering his shoulders quite without her noticing. Once grounded there she focused on them. Strong shoulders were luxurious to have under one’s hands. 

She explored them slowly with her touch before she pulled away and shook her head at him, risking provoking his wrath once again. 

“What will you give  _ me?” _

He let out a murderous sound and she shivered, as he’d grown so much deadlier since she saw him last. Before his strength seemed athletic, now it just seemed lethal. 

He didn’t answer, and for a moment it felt to her that he would ignore her fear if she pushed it away: she she straightened up and spoke clearly:

“You’re being too rough. Please,” she added, meaning it, and that brought him to stillness.

He clicked his tongue and set her back on his knee to properly examine her face. Her caught in his large hand, her cheek cushioned by the heel of his thumb. She fought this like her pet kitten fought a washing even when it sorely needed it, but he was so strong that soon he got the good look at her he was seeking. Rey squirmed as he stared. 

“You’re afraid.”

He shouldn’t dare accuse her of such. Her hands tightened into fists. 

“I stand to lose all of myself to the Black Knight: a man who has been nothing shy of beastly since he forced his way into my bedchamber.”

Rey was on her back in an instant: panicked that voicing her fears only proved them so insubstantial to him that he’d just ignore them. But he didn’t overpower her. As she lay with her legs hanging off the edge of the bed, he came to kneel between them. Switching their positions. 

“Mistress,” he growled, not nearly as sweetly as he once did, but just as soft. “I pray for a chance to see you.”

Rey closed her eyes and held her breath. He did not move without her answer. Slowly binding himself to her will. 

Rey released her breath and clutched the hem of her chemise, though not as tightly as she did when Kaydel reached for it. 

“Y-you may…” she finally whispered after she felt the whole world had gone silent awaiting her answer. 

He didn’t move until she drew the chemise up her thighs. She had to squirm to get the garment off herself. He only sat back on his heels from where he knelt when she drew it up over her head and sat up naked in front of him. 

His eyes stayed on her face. 

“Well, you asked, so  _ look _ at me,” she ordered lamely, her face red. 

He wasn’t completely unmoved. His muscles pulsed his body inward like a clenching fist. But he kept his eyes on hers. 

“I look, dear Lady.”

There was a suit of armor in the great hall she’d play a game with when she was a child. She’d leap at it and make faces and prod its empty metal belly with her fingers. It never gave chase. It never grew cross with her. It quietly tolerated all of her teasing.

Sir Solo was a bit like that armor. She could do as she pleased with him. Terrorize him. Flirt and tease and promise whatever popped into her head whether it would happen or not. But he couldn’t move: frozen by his vows. 

And the full force of her past teasing, all turned back on her now with his slight smirk, it nearly knocked her out.

Rey crossed her arms over her chest and fell back on the bed. She lay there, naked as the day she was born, and waited. He stayed at her feet. Eyes only on her face. 

Like nothing had happened.

“Mistress?”

Her husband’s voice came up from the floor as cleared his throat. When Rey didn’t answer or even lift her head from the mattress, he let the choice she made in her silence stretch thin enough to fill the entire room. 

“Perhaps you’d like a ballad about your pair of pretty eyes.”

Rey growled to herself and pulled her knees up to her chest, pivoting quickly to her side on the bed so all he could see was her bare spine from his spot on the floor. He could think her foolish for wanting him to be sweet. He could mock her. But she knew what she desired, what she wished. Hot tears slipped down her cheeks. 

“Lie still for me.”

Her blood went cold as her body obeyed.

Desire was complicated. Expectations were so sacred to the experience: it made surprises seem scary and wrong. Even if she liked them a little. Even if she had spent all those years hoping the empty suit of armor in the great hall she teased would spring to life and carry the naughty girl that she was off somewhere. 

“Can I move if I want to?”

Ben paused to consider the question. 

“Yes, Omega, yes, Rey, move as you wish.”

She let out a raw laugh.

“Even if it’s to run from you?”

He laughed, both of them enjoying a joke that was meant for themselves, each cutting and personal. 

“If you’re free to do as you wish, you still won’t run from me.”

His patience was remarkable, compared to the night before, but perhaps since he had her both in law and in blood he had less reason for urgency.

Rey considered his smooth, smug answers. She supposed, at least, she could properly mourn now. She had dreamed him so perfectly that it was impossible for them to become real. Dreams don’t allow for change. They took an instant in a mind’s eye with no alteration. What is known and tangible and can’t be undone. 

Lying very still, she unclenched her own hands, letting them fan gently across her bare breasts. 

“I won’t deny you your marital rights: I've done everything badly so I won’t also give grounds for annulment as something else I’d have to plead to the king for.”

Rey came to her decision naturally: the spice of his scent heavy in the air, making her head float, her thoughts buoyant.

He was still damnably handsome, and capable of more civility than the night before. He was clearly a capable warrior, and would protect her if she needed protecting. Rey tried to apply a cold eye to her match and found, as a creature forced to be practical, it was practical to have The Black Knight. Only emotion impeded her: and she hadn’t let emotion dictate much since he left.

And during her next heat, she wouldn’t be alone like she had the many ones he had been gone. 

She’d started taking a draught for the past six months whenever it came to keep herself in a deep sleep. 

Otherwise she’d be in too much agony alone.

Ben was pensively silent at her offer. It was an offer, when he could just take it.

“Why?”

Rey swallowed back tears:

“Because I miss him. Whether he is a shadow etched in stone or a shadow on my skin, I cannot spurn him for long.”

He moved to her. She felt it without having to open her eyes. Cool, blunt fingers brushed her sweaty hair aside and tucked the strands behind her ear. 

Lips pressed to her collarbone, and then the wiry musculature of her arm, and the curve of her waist last. She felt his brow nuzzle against a protruding bone of her hip.

She squeezed her eyes tight, even though they were already closed. 

_ Just love me.  _

“My loyalty to you is above my judgement, above my vows, above God and country.”

Rey whimpered as his lips caressed her under that harsh bone jutting out against her skin. 

“That makes me a traitor, a man who would sacrifice honor for you, and a dangerous thing. There was a moment where I thought I truly died, that the vial you gave me broke and bathed me in your smell and it helped me find my way to you. I ceased to be a soldier and became your monster.”

Rey was shivering as he licked his way down her thigh. 

“May I open my eyes now?”

Her own eyes burst open as she observed him kneeling at the side of the bed, reaching his lips to her body with his eyes indeed closed, moving across her simply by touch. She didn’t dare permit him, just to see what he’d do, and he worshipfully kissed the tops of her feet when he ran out of body to cherish with his mouth without opening them. 

Rey pushed her shin against him to silently instruct that he guide his way back  _ up _ her figure. 

Perhaps, if he could be stubborn, so could she. She would not be less of a lady even if he were less of a gentleman. 

“Dear Sir Knight, please open your eyes.”

They opened at her command. Even he seemed stunned at her tender tone. 

A shiver travelled from shoulders to her waist at the look in his dark eyes. She lay back on the bed, allowing herself to be wrapped up in the sensuality of her own nakedness and his touch. He’d shed his boots and freed the chausses from his legs before he’d come to this side of the bed. He pulled his tunic over his head and tossed it to the floor. All that clothes him were his arm guards and breeches. This was the barest she’d ever seen him, his naked chest hovering over hers, and soon that would change in many other ways. 

Ben hovered over her with his hands heavy on the mattress on either side of her.

She reached for him and finally opened the buckle that strapped his arm guards together at the center of his chest. The bed dipped with the exerted pressure of his fists digging into it as he held still for her. But she was too tentative: though unbuckled, she wasn’t given time to peel them from his skin.

He growled into her shoulder as he clambered over her body. Taking his place as her husband and mate.

“I’m scared,” Rey admitted softly, more to herself.

She was most frightened of calling this man Beniamy, it hurt as almost a betrayal of the person she knew, but he steadied himself above her. While he was only honey-tongued in the spirit of mockery, he had been and was surprisingly gentle.

“I know. You’re my mate. I can feel it.”

“I l-loved you,” she let tears slip past her defenses. 

He kissed her brow. 

_ Say you love me and it will be alright. _

“I’ve come for you, mate.”

_ “Oh.” _

His finger went inside. Rey’s whole body arched into his touch. She had to take a moment to receive the thickness of his one finger clutched tight in her depths. His smell and his mouth and just what little of him she remembered  _ was  _ still there had made her so wet and eager. 

Perhaps if he had gotten his hands on her sooner this would have happened quickly. Losing herself.

When she opened her eyes, she saw his jaw clenched with effort. It was draining him to hold back. He wasn’t the same, but he was trying. 

She opened her thighs to rub herself against the straining fabric at the front of his trousers. The stimulation had his control slipping, his mouth fell readily to her gland, which was puffy and sensitive from her own arousal. She trembled from head to toe and his tongue traced hot swollen skin. It was hypnotic, to the point that she was struggling in his arms. Not for him to stop. But that her feelings had now convinced her it was not enough.

Her face flushed and she felt herself swooning into the pillows. Below, where his fingers worked her, it felt more like her body was exerted. Her inner muscles tensing on every slide of his slick fingers. 

But her head felt funny. Like those silly ladies of court who would faint over the jousts that wounded their Sir Knights. Rey had never fainted before, she felt something slipping as if she were about to—

_ “Oh!” _

Her spine arched violently off the bed, as much as it was allowed with him hovering over her to mouth at her sensitive neck. In the silence that followed her exhalation of surprised pleasure, she heard something vulgar sounding from the thrust of his fingers: wet squelches that brought a deeper shade of crimson to her cheeks.

“Rey,” he rasped as his fingers thrust into her, his other hand clutching her hip firmly  _ “answer me.” _

A gentleman would allow her more dignity in this process: he would not draw his eyes up her body with such a dark look and increase his pace so they grew louder. 

The struggle against obeying his command added torture to his excellent touch. She felt something in her mind stretch, and dug her teeth into her lip to feel it pull. 

Which would cause a more perfect release: to obey or to let herself snap?

Her psyche danced like a flickering flame for the moments she resisted. And then burst back to a steady glow as she opened her eyes for him and nodded.

He smirked down at her and quickened the pace of his wicked fingers.

Rey let out a hopeless moan. Her husband sat back on his heels and seemed to take in the picture she made for him. He would not allow this to go discreetly: protecting her modesty as it could all be over softly and silently. He seemed to be spurred on by her thighs tensing around his hand, the way she writhed on the bed, and the sounds that came from her body. From both her mouth and her cunt.

“What was that?”

Her nod may have spurred him on, but she was not free from this examination just yet. Rey swallowed a knot in her throat and closed her eyes. She had never been commanded before tonight. She knew from the trials of court intrigue that the nature of orders from noblemen was its own creature. Ben’s commands were as vexing and complicated as he was. But they were carefully phrased. Her  _ answer _ was demanded of her. Not  _ what _ the answer would be. There was a little freedom in that, just as the confident declaration that she may move as she wished, but his own knowledge that she wouldn’t want to run was not a command. 

It was something that he sensed inside her, and was true, she would not run from this.

“I’m your wife,” she spat at him, looking rather feral for a woman so sweetly taking pleasure from a lover, “and your mate. I gave you myself twice over: now shall be the third time.”

He growled and took her mouth with a lush embrace of his own. She whined as he teased her slick cunny. 

She’d never say it out loud. It felt good to give in.

_ “Ahh,” _ she added, softer, weaker, the quake of first pleasure receding not to its absence, but to an adjustment of expectation. She dug her teeth into her lip and wriggled on her back closer to his hand. Flush against it. He stroked at something she had never thought about before with his thumb as his fingers thrust inside: it caused her to shiver spasmodically.

She looked up at him after the feeling settled again.

He was staring at her body as he played with it. She was set upon his open hand and he eyed her cunt and stomach and her tits…

For some reason that had her gasp a little. The air that came between them was cold against her nipples, so bare and upturned she couldn’t ignore the throb of them. There was an itch to cover them, to touch them—resisted only by her husband giving them a crooked smile at the sight and settling his mouth upon one as she thrashed and whimpered. His fingers twitched inside her walls with a renewed energy. 

He had her. 

Rey was not only mated, but banished from her home. And  _ he _ was going to claim her now. She shut her eyes tightly and thrashed against his clever hand.

All was bleak and fearful in the world until his rough pace made those feelings give way on a moment of pure mindless bliss.

Rey let out a giggle in a high peal as her body trembled for him. It was harsh, but nothing compared to the collision going on inside her. She wouldn’t have thought twice about it if his eyes had not widened as they did when her slick flooded his palm. 

There was a moment that overtook him as well, not release, but instinct, and he bowed forward and bit her shoulder. He didn’t break the skin but it was hard and out of his control. Something of the Alpha in him. She clung to his arms and pleaded until he replaced his fingers with his cock. 

She let out a low groan at the sensation of being filled. Her first spell of pleasure had softened her body for him, slick pouring out. But he was a massive thing she had yet to take. Rey blinked her eyes open and saw the intensity of his gaze above her. Possessive. Claiming. 

Rey shivered the aftershocks against his hunched body, until he too relaxed in the glow that settled over her. 

His own expression was much softer when he lifted his head from her skin.

Rey fidgeted as he examined her intensely.

_ “What?” _

The sweetness in his eye, once spoken of, vanished and he grew somber again. Ben first withdrew his slick-soaked fingers from her body and looked at them as if shocked. Then he looked upon her face. 

“You laugh when you cum.”

Rey pushed herself up on her elbows. Not sure if she should be offended by the observation.

“Should I not?”

She had no idea. The impulse to laugh was the least of her worries when she came, it came carelessly, and the sound was clear and high as a bell. No mockery or cruelty passed her lips. The feeling was like a tickle when he touched her, was that the wrong response? With so much going on at her center and her breast and her heart: her little giggle was the last thing she’d think twice about what just occurred between them. 

But now her chest was flushing that she had done something wrong.

“No,” he said quickly, looking down at her thigh, "it's fine."

But there was something else he wasn’t saying.

Rey’s heart was pounding and the flush spread from her chest to her cheeks. She’d done something stupid, or unattractive. An hour ago she wouldn’t have thought much of repulsing him. But seeing her Alpha withhold himself from commenting further on the sounds she made in bed was enough to stop her heart.

Rey turned swiftly onto her stomach, her backside offered to him instead. Her hands clutched the pillow in front of her.

“Let’s see the deed done.”

Beside her, Ben sighed and got up on his knees. His finger plunged back into her and she gasped as he teased all the slick pooling out of her.

And gasped again when the head of his cock presented itself at her opening, nudging, inviting, until her arms shook where they held herself up. 

He seemed to note the instability and teased her further with his blunt head, until Rey fell in a heap on the mattress with a soft moan, unable to balance herself. 

He just laughed to himself as he dipped his hips lower and aligned his prick again. With a gentle hand, he brushed her long, loose hair from her shoulders and tucked it to one side of her neck. Baring the scar of his bite. 

He pressed in, with one fluid motion, and it stole all her air. Rey let out a thunderous cry, drawing out the sounds of her previous laugh with a wildness she had never imagined. This was her mate, snug inside her. The feeling that Beniamy Solo was  _ home _ finally came to her, wracked through her, had her limbs trembling and spine arching. Since he had returned it had all felt like a dream: the change in him, her impending marriage, her banishment, all of it. Now it felt like she was awake. Her skin prickled with awareness that he came back. It did not take the sight of him or the smell of him or even his voice but  _ this. _

Her fingers stretched out for something on the bed to grab onto as his hips swayed, teasing, the slick of her cunt kissing his skin. His chest pressed into her back, pressing her further into the bed. 

And with a roll of his hips and a cry ripped from her lips that would rival a lioness: they were one.

**Author's Note:**

> So, quick note about the codes of chivalry:
> 
> In ‘Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart’, Lancelot is off to rescue Guinevere, his on-again/off-again girlfriend who happens to be married to the king, and he loses his horse. Actually, he loses two horses by riding them too fast in his haste. In order to complete this journey, a passerby offers him a lift in a cart. A knight seen riding in a cart is a huge dishonor (re: horses fit to ride are for knights/nobility and riding in a cart is for cabbages) so he hesitates. He still goes, but first he hesitates, because he could be known from that day forth as Sir Cabbage or something. When he arrives at the castle where Guinevere is being held, he goes to her door expecting she will receive him because of this long journey he took in order to save her. Still, after his struggles, she refuses him. Why? Because he hesitated.
> 
> That’s chivalry. 
> 
> All jokes aside: when there are actions in this story that involve Rey being pissed because she feels Ben is acting in bad faith: that’s chivalry. While it is about grand gestures and performative devotion to "earn" love, it is also to effectively lower yourself to her feet and have her deem you worthy or not. You don’t impose your will on her. It’s a weird concept that is both oddly balanced and limiting as fuck, it just depends on who’s navigating it. So as explored in this story, chivalry can work for two people, and not work for other people, and I place Rey and Ben somewhere in the middle.


End file.
